| Contract is a legal document that is often used in social life today. Because of varied causes, very often are contract dispute cases emerging, which has become a common concern. In order to find out the causes of contract disputes, this thesis will apply Speech Act Theory in the analysis of contract dispute cases.The thesis mainly answers the following three questions:(1) What are the speech acts in contracts?(2) What are the causes of contract disputes?(3) How to reduce contract disputes? Thus the thesis will adopt literature research method, quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis to study contract disputes. The present study will figure out the mechanism of speech acts in contracts. On this basis, it will find out the causes of contract disputes. Thus it will come up with the measures to reduce contract disputes.In the earliest period, contract disputes were studied in a legal perspective. As time went on, some scholars gradually drew their attention to language problems of contract disputes. This thesis looks at contract disputes under the framework of Speech Act Theory, which was first put forward by John L. Austin, a philosopher of Oxford University. John R. Searle, a student of Austin’s, developed the theory into a systematic one. As we know, Austin distinguished performatives and constatives, and he divided speech acts into the following types: locutionary act, illocutionary act and perlocutionary act. Later Searle made important addition to the theory, by putting forward four felicity conditions as follows: propositional content condition, preparatory condition, sincerity condition and the essential condition. This thesis will their theory in the explanation of contract dispute cases.As can be shown, some contract disputes are caused by locutionary act, which violate the propositional content condition of speech acts, i.e. the words or the clauses do not carry the participants’ real ideas. Some contract disputes are caused by illocutionary act, which go against the preparatory condition as well as sincerity condition of speech acts, i.e. there are gaps of expectation and promise between the participants, or false are the promises made by the participants, or there are overlord clauses( or inequality clauses) imposed upon one party. Other contract disputes are caused by perlocutionary act, which violate the essential condition of speech acts, i.e. the participants are not willing to implement certain clauses or they are unable to do so.The author of the present study scrutinizes 30 contract dispute cases, figures out the the percentage among the four felicity conditions of speech acts that are violated in those cases, and then finds that the violation of the propositional content condition covers 43.33%; the violation of the preparatory condition covers 30%; the violation of the sincerity condition covers 26.67%; the violation of the essential condition covers 36.67%.In a word, the leading cause of contract disputes is that the participants’ speech acts in the contract do not conform to what their felicity conditions requires. As a result, these speech acts do not satisfy the participants’ expectations. In order to reduce contract disputes, the participants of contracts have to pay attention to the following aspects: firstly, the content of a contract ought to be precisely and clearly expressed; secondly, the content of a contract ought to be completely consistent with the true expectations of the participants; thirdly, the participants ought to sincere and fair to each other; and all the clauses have to be lawful and are not beyond the ken of the participants; no inequality clauses should be included in the content; finally, the participants ought to implement all the clauses once the contract is agreed upon and signed. |
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